A young ISIS supporter has been jailed for disseminating terrorist propaganda material on YouTube, WhatsApp and Telegram.
Taha Hussain, 21, a close friend of the London Bridge attack ring leader, was found guilty of seven charges of spreading terrorist propaganda saying politicians, police and soldiers were the “best of all people to kill”.
Taha was 19 when he started sharing videos and audio files on social media in an attempt to justify the Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks.
He also filmed himself while driving around Windsor whilst shouting ISIS slogans out of his car window.
The court heard that he ran two YouTube channels which he used to broadcast ISIS propaganda.
Security sources told Sky News that had he not been arrested 10 months before the London Bridge attack, it is “perfectly conceivable he’d have gone on to play a part in that attack”.
When Taha was arrested last August, police found a “black ISIS flag” as his screensaver and his PIN number was 9117 – an apparent reference to the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks.
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Other images on the device showed the “ISIS flag” photo-shopped on an image of the Houses of Parliament burning, as well as flying outside Number 10 Downing Street.
Jailing him for four and a half years at Kingston Crown Court, Judge Paul Dodgson described some of the evidence as “chilling”, particularly in light of recent attacks Britain.
He said: “The Windsor videos illustrated quite graphically what his state of mind was at the time.”
One document shared by Hussain included an article which offered advice to would-be attackers on how to prepare, get past airport security, and conceal their intentions from their parents – as the defendant had done – and how to behave upon arrival in Syria.
Another file told fighters who could not travel abroad to “kill the kuffar [unbeliever] in their own country”.
Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, head of counter-terrorism policing for the southeast, said posts like the ones shared by Hussain “have the power to influence other people and particularly those who may be young and impressionable or vulnerable for a variety of reasons”.
